THE NEWS filtered in, announcing the death of ex-dictator and immediate President Muhammadu Buhari in a London hospital. As expected, his remains were packaged and returned for burial in the country.
The nature of Buhari’s health challenges were never disclosed to Nigerians. The Punch newspaper reports that between 2015 and 2022, he spent a total of 225 days outside the country for medical treatment as president, yet not once was the nature of his illness made public. It follows that Buhari might have long been dead if he had not been president, with full access to the nation’s wealth to procure the best healthcare from anywhere in the world.
The health sector remained “in shambles, our hospitals mere consulting clinics without drugs…”, to recall Sani Abacha’s famous 1983 broadcast, only now, things are unarguably even worse. One might have expected that the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down the world and forced members of the ruling class to stay home, would have jolted the elites into investing in state-of-the-art medical facilities. Yet, Nigeria was ranked by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the 4th worst country in the world for access to healthcare, 189 out of 191 countries.
What then, will Buhari be remembered for? Yes, his name will feature in the country’s historical records for ruling Nigeria twice. Beyond this, for the working masses, his legacy is that of a betrayal of the hopes and expectations placed on him to bring about meaningful change and a turnaround in fortunes.
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Let’s begin with his 2015 inaugural speech, where he proclaimed that he would “belong to nobody” and, supposedly, “belong to everybody.” Not many recognised at the time that he had peddled a clever gambit to the working masses. In the end, he chose his side, true to the expectations of the ruling elites and governed consistently in the interests of big business and foreign capital.
Buhari never attempted to free Nigeria from the capitalist stranglehold fully imposed by Babangida’s regime in 1986, the regime that overthrew him for hesitating to hand Nigeria over to the IMF and World Bank. Given a second chance at governance, Buhari played along, giving private capital free rein to dictate economic policy and administer the national economy, resulting in the systematic extraction of public wealth and its diversion into private hands.
All key sectors of the economy that cried for attention when he returned to power in 2015 were left untouched. Nigeria continued to wallow between 4,000–5,000MW of power generation, a figure Buhari himself once described as a “national shame.” By the time he left office, the country still lacked the capacity to effectively distribute even that dismal output.
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The health sector remained “in shambles, our hospitals mere consulting clinics without drugs…”, to recall Sani Abacha’s famous 1983 broadcast, only now, things are unarguably even worse. One might have expected that the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down the world and forced members of the ruling class to stay home, would have jolted the elites into investing in state-of-the-art medical facilities. Yet, Nigeria was ranked by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the 4th worst country in the world for access to healthcare, 189 out of 191 countries.
The Tinubu regime, to whom Buhari handed over power, merely picked up from where he stopped. With his inaugural declaration of “subsidy is gone,” Tinubu took the next logical step up the ladder that Buhari had already put in place. In that sense, we will not miss Buhari at all, dead or alive, as Tinubu continues to walk in his footsteps, deepening the hardship of the working masses.
How ironic that Buhari died in a London hospital: The Clinic, one of the choicest private medical facilities in the UK. This same Buhari once declared: “I will certainly not encourage expending Nigeria’s hard-earned resources on any government official seeking medical care abroad…”. Yet he ended up the chief violator of his own policy, as his administration failed to adequately fund the health sector. The 2021 health budget of $1.07 billion was less than half of the $2.4 billion expenditure for Guy’s and St. Thomas’ — a UK government hospital, not to mention The Clinic, the elite private facility patronised by Nigeria’s ruling class.
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He made no effort to initiate steel production or lay the groundwork for industrialisation. Even the much-hyped Petroleum Industry Act (2021), touted as a “game changer,” has proven to be a farce. It did nothing to alter the status quo. Instead, it deepened deregulation and privatisation of the oil and gas sector, handing full control to private capital and further enabling super-profits at the expense of national development and the basic needs of the working masses. (See: Aj. Dagga Tolar – Nigeria: A Country at the Precipice, 2022)
The Tinubu regime, to whom Buhari handed over power, merely picked up from where he stopped. With his inaugural declaration of “subsidy is gone,” Tinubu took the next logical step up the ladder that Buhari had already put in place. In that sense, we will not miss Buhari at all, dead or alive, as Tinubu continues to walk in his footsteps, deepening the hardship of the working masses.
And how does one even begin to mourn Buhari, considering the genocidal killings and massacres carried out by the military with his full backing? The carnage he inflicted on humanity is unforgettable. In Kaduna, according to a state government official, the bodies of 347 members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) were collected from hospital mortuaries and a military depot and buried secretly in a mass grave near Mando. The IMN claimed an additional 350 people remain unaccounted for. Among the victims were 193 children and 23 pregnant women. “Twenty-three families were completely wiped out,” according to reports.
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Al-Zakzaky, the leader of IMN, witnessed the murder of his three sons, including a fifteen-year-old Humaid, right before his eyes, simply for asserting their right to worship and clashing with the army over road access during a military parade in Zaria. As a reward, Buratai, then Chief of Army Staff, was retained beyond retirement age.
However, one Aliyu Abdullahi, in stating otherwise, claims that “Buhari ran the most socialism (sic) government in the recent history of this country.” He goes further to argue that “perhaps a mix of socialism and capitalism/free market economy could have created a better economy under him.” What falsehood! Even in his grave, Buhari would not smile at such a description. It is an insult to the very idea of socialism to associate it with an administration that pushed 100% in the direction of capitalism. The same path is now accelerated under Tinubu. None of Buhari’s policies could be remotely considered socialist. The commanding heights of the economy were fully dominated by private capital. Buhari wasn’t even a Social Democrat in ideology. At best, his actions reflected the pragmatism and military authoritarianism of a self-entitled ruler who saw the nation’s wealth as personal spoil, disguised as patriotic service.
In the East, working-class youths and IPOB members calling for self-determination were gunned down in the streets. One of the most horrific incidents was the extrajudicial killing of civilians in Oyigbo, Rivers State, during a so-called military reprisal.
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And can we ever forget the Lekki toll gate massacre – 20th October 2020 – when peaceful protesting working class youth were shot indiscriminately and their remains removed before dawn for simply calling for the needed reforms in the police and an end of the unwholesome illegal practices of extortion, torture and police brutality visited on Nigerians – “The atrocious maiming and killing of unarmed, helpless and unresisting protesters, while sitting on the floor and waving their Nigerian flags and while singing the National Anthem”?
These atrocities alone should have been enough to bring Buhari to trial, dead or alive, alongside all his accomplices, including Buratai. But of course, we know this will never happen. These crimes are seen by the ruling elites as “legitimate acts” in defence of their class interest, cloaked in the language of national security.
However, one Aliyu Abdullahi, in stating otherwise, claims that “Buhari ran the most socialism (sic) government in the recent history of this country.” He goes further to argue that “perhaps a mix of socialism and capitalism/free market economy could have created a better economy under him.” What falsehood!
Buhari’s true legacy is the further entrenchment of Nigeria’s colonial role as a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for goods from the West and China. Only an organised movement of the working people can break this stranglehold. No wing of the ruling class, either APC, PDP, ADC, or any other, offers a path forward for the working masses. Nor should anyone entertain illusions that an individual from their ethnic group, just by getting into power, will defend their class interests.
Even in his grave, Buhari would not smile at such a description. It is an insult to the very idea of socialism to associate it with an administration that pushed 100% in the direction of capitalism. The same path is now accelerated under Tinubu. None of Buhari’s policies could be remotely considered socialist. The commanding heights of the economy were fully dominated by private capital. Buhari wasn’t even a Social Democrat in ideology. At best, his actions reflected the pragmatism and military authoritarianism of a self-entitled ruler who saw the nation’s wealth as personal spoil, disguised as patriotic service.
Instead of developing the means of production for the benefit of all, his administration became a launchpad for looting, legitimising the complete submission of the economy to foreign capital under the excuse of curbing corruption.
Abdullahi needs a proper schooling in the A, B, C of socialism. We boldly state: the first fundamental principle of socialism is the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy under democratic control and management by a government of the working people. To continue to base one’s understanding of socialism on the bureaucratic dictatorship of the former USSR, distorted by Stalinism and stripped of its democratic core, is to remain in confusion.
Buhari’s true legacy is the further entrenchment of Nigeria’s colonial role as a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for goods from the West and China. Only an organised movement of the working people can break this stranglehold. No wing of the ruling class, either APC, PDP, ADC, or any other, offers a path forward for the working masses. Nor should anyone entertain illusions that an individual from their ethnic group, just by getting into power, will defend their class interests.
Ethnicity and religion are nothing more than tools used by the elites in their power struggle. Once power is won, they unite to defend the interests of big business, foreign and local, while the working masses are left to suffer worsening conditions.
Comrade Tolar writes from the Movement for Socialist Alternative.
